461592

2012
CHD19410.1177/0907568212461592ChildhoodAlanen

Editorial

Childhood

Disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity
19(4) 419­–422
© The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission:
and childhood studies sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0907568212461592
chd.sagepub.com

From its beginning in 1993, this journal was ‘intended to act as a forum for research on
childhood and children, as a forum where disciplines can meet, where findings can be
presented and where new understandings and new perspectives can be generated’
(Frønes, 1993). By providing a meeting-place for researchers from different disciplinary
backgrounds, the journal would assist in developing the study of children and childhood
into a multidisciplinary field and, with increasing familiarity with the work of others and
enhanced collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, even towards interdisciplinarity.
In his editorial to the first issue of Childhood, the journal’s first editor Ivar Frønes noted
that ‘we could already speak of such disciplinary subfields as the sociology, the anthro-
pology and the history of childhood’, and that ‘considerations of childhood and children
were beginning to come to the front also in other disciplines, such as economics and
political science’. (Developmental psychology is of course the oldest among ‘childhood
disciplines’ within the social sciences, and did not get a mention in Frønes’ short list of
emerging ‘new’ childhood disciplines.)
In 2012, as the journal will soon start its 20th volume, the field of childhood studies
seems to have become a truly multidisciplinary one. Today the field is populated not only
by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and historians, but also by geographers,
philosophers, ethicists, economists, and many more. The recognition is that that child-
hood and ‘the child’ are indeed complex phenomena; understanding them properly, and
not just partially, compels any disciplinarian to consult researchers from other disciplin-
ary fields, and to develop efficient forms of communication and collaboration with them.
The goal would be to integrate the central guiding vision(s) of the social study of child-
hood with compatible notions of children and childhood originating in other major disci-
plines concerned with children: an integrated, overarching framework for interdisciplinary
childhood research.
How far are we from reaching such a goal? Or even from establishing and solidifying
links of meaningful communication and collaboration with colleagues in other disci-
plines, to start with?
Many of us already seem to describe the field as an interdisciplinary field of study (cf.
Thorne, 2007). Frequently – and increasingly so in recent years – one can read in articles
published in Childhood mentions such as the ‘growing body of interdisciplinary child-
hood studies’ or the ‘interdisciplinary umbrella of childhood studies’. But also arguments
are being made to the effect that childhood studies would now need to start engaging in
a conversation across disciplinary boundaries and to start working to make the field
genuinely interdisciplinary (cf. Morrow, 2011; Prout, 2005).1 In preparing ourselves for
a true beginning we need to ask questions that Barrie Thorne raised in her editorial
(2007) on what this claim of the field’s interdisciplinarity might mean. What animates
420 Childhood 19(4)

scholars and practitioners to move across traditional disciplinary boundaries? What are
the grounds for fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration in the study of chil-
dren and childhood?
There is a widespread belief that interdisciplinary research is a good thing and some-
thing to strive for. Interdisciplinarity has had, for some time already, a high priority for
science policy and research funding, and it is also a growth area in studies on knowledge
production (Jacobs and Frickel, 2009). A central reason for the goodness and signifi-
cance of interdisciplinarity is that it is believed to push the frontiers of knowledge for-
ward and create knowledge that helps to solve the problems of the world (e.g. Weingart,
2000). Many of the problems that we face today, also as objects of research, appear to be
highly complex and multifaceted, and will not respect disciplinary boundaries. Therefore,
to find coherent solutions to them requires that researchers collaborate with colleagues
outside their home disciplines. It is further argued that collaboration across disciplines
increases the likelihood that the proposed solutions will also be more effective than dis-
cipline-based solutions. A common belief is also that interdisciplinarity enhances cre-
ativity, and to the extent that it does, the possibility of finding innovative solutions to the
problems at hand is likely to increase. A further advantage of engaging in interdisciplin-
arity is that it will help researchers to rethink their own discipline in new ways. New
ways may result from considering questions from outside one’s own discipline, from
learning new methods of answering questions and from considering the possible signifi-
cance of the findings of other disciplines for one’s own work (see e.g. Strober, 2010).
‘Interdisciplinarity’ is commonly understood to mean something like the emergence
of insight and understanding of a domain of problems through the integration of episte-
mologies, concepts and methods from different disciplines in some novel way. During
the last 50 years or so, interdisciplinarity has become a major topic in its own right,
within academic discourse on knowledge production, and has given rise to new studies
that deal with the defining characteristics and challenges of these activities.
Interdisciplinarity moreover is not just one thing: multiple ‘interdisciplinarities’ are said
to exist ‘from simple borrowings and methodological thickening to theoretical enrich-
ment, converging sites, and a general shift … to new ‘cross-’, ‘counter-’, and ‘antidisci-
plinary’ positions that front the problem of how meaning is produced, maintained and
deconstructed’ (Klein, 1996). So where, why and how are we to promote interdisciplinar-
ity in childhood studies?
‘True’ interdisciplinarity is difficult to achieve. Interdisciplinarity scholars contend
that more often than not it remains an elusive goal and in practice many interdisciplinary
enterprises actually work at the level of being multidisciplinary. This is the case when a
group of researchers from different disciplines collaborate by working together on a
shared problem, but continue to use theories, tools and methods from their own disci-
pline, and only occasionally use the output from each other’s work: working practices
remain disciplinary.
Many of the reasons for the difficulty are well known. There are barriers within the
university system itself for genuinely interdisciplinary communication and collabora-
tion. Structural barriers concern the organizational structure of science, including the
mechanisms of pressure and incentives that are built into the organization. The academic
reward structure for hiring, promotion and grants provides powerful incentives to
Editorial 421

specialize narrowly, and few incentives and opportunities to integrate knowledge from
other fields of study. There are also knowledge barriers that are constituted by the lack of
familiarity that scientists often have with other disciplinary fields. This may cause mis-
understandings and failed communication, and also contributes to an absence of visions
of possible connections between the disciplines. Cultural barriers are formed by differ-
ences in the cultural characteristics of different fields of inquiry, particularly the lan-
guage and the style of argumentation used, as well as differences in epistemologies and
values (see e.g. Bruun et al., 2005; Strober, 2010). All these make cross-disciplinary
forays onerous and discourage cross-disciplinary work among researchers.
In the pursuit of driving childhood studies towards interdisciplinarity, it is worth
keeping in mind that disciplinarianism and interdisciplinarianism are not adversaries:
they should not be seen to compete with each other; rather, there is a sense of interdepen-
dency between them. As the purpose of interdisciplinary collaboration is to draw on
disciplinary expertise in two or more disciplines, in order for one to be interdisciplinary
one must first be proficient in one’s own discipline. Consequently, to make interdisci-
plinary childhood studies thrive we need to have a strong sociology of childhood, solid
historical studies of childhood, a thriving geography of children, and so on. But this in
turn requires that the subdiscipline builds up and nurtures strong connections to its
‘mother discipline’ and develops a strong disciplinarian identity. There may be problems
if this route is not followed.
The case of childhood sociology provides a pertinent example of the situation that is
most probably shared by many of subdisciplinary fields that presently meet under the
umbrella of childhood studies. Should childhood sociologists make the multi- and inter-
disciplinary childhood studies their main, and even only, field of reference, and should
they prioritize the identity of a childhood researcher, there is a risk of (self-)exclusion
within their own mother discipline (sociology). And as the subfield of childhood sociol-
ogy continues to struggle to be recognized and to gain its due status within the mother
discipline, it is paramount that strong connections are sought for and practiced with
general sociology, its theory and research.
To develop childhood studies towards greater multidisciplinarity and even interdisci-
plinarity this provides a timely lesson to be learned across the field of childhood
studies.

Note
1. See also the short essays (‘Viewpoints’) on disciplinarity and/vs multi-/cross-/interdiscipli-
narity that were published in 2010 in Children’s Geographies 8(2).

References
Bruun H, Hukkinen J, Huutoniemi K and Klein JT (2005) Promoting Interdisciplinary Research:
The Case of the Academy of Finland. Helsinki: Publications of the Academy of Finland.
Frønes I (1993) Editorial: Changing childhood. Childhood 1(1): 1–2.
Jacobs JA and Frickel S (2009) Interdisciplinarity: A critical assessment. Annual Review of
Sociology 35: 43–65.
Klein JT (1996) Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities.
Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia.
422 Childhood 19(4)

Morrow V (2011) Editorial: Politics and economics in global questions about childhood and
youth … the trouble with numbers. Childhood 19(1): 3–7.
Prout A (2005) The Future of Childhood: Toward an Interdisciplinary Study of Childhood. New
York and London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Strober MH (2010) Interdisciplinary Conversations: Challenging Habits of Thought. Palo Alto,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Thorne B (2007) Editorial: Crafting the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies. Childhood
19(1): 147–152.
Weingart P (2000) Interdisciplinarity: The paradoxical discourse. In: Weingart P and Stehr N
(eds) Practicing Interdisciplinarity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 25–41.

Leena Alanen, Co-editor

University of Jyväskylä, Finland
June, 2012